


birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it

by cori_the_bloody



Series: the Howard Gross Eats Pussy 'Verse [1]
Category: Never Have I Ever (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, I understand why you might be wary of this non-shippy fic, One Shot, and if it gives you comfort, and that it stands up to the brand i've been building for myself in this fandom, but I hope you'll give it a chance, know that I have started a very shippy followup fic, which I'm describing as Slots Into Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:35:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26149558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cori_the_bloody/pseuds/cori_the_bloody
Summary: Howard gives Ben The Talk.
Relationships: Ben Gross & Howard Gross, Ben Gross/Shira (Never Have I Ever)
Series: the Howard Gross Eats Pussy 'Verse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1898905
Comments: 25
Kudos: 28





	birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you, Bethany, for reading over this!
> 
> [Click](https://catty-words.tumblr.com/post/626543971936731136/hello-so-im-dying-to-talk-to-someone-about-never) [here](https://catty-words.tumblr.com/post/626916979440222208/and-thus-i-have-been-led-to-the-conclusion-that) ye who seek context.

“—known this was going to happen.”

Zoe’s voice carries easily over the din of student chatter and, sure enough, when he turns the corner on his way to meet Shira at her locker to walk her to practice, she’s already there, along with Carley and a few other girls from the field hockey team.

“Come on,” one of them says as Ben steps up and slides his arm around Shira. She leans into him but doesn’t otherwise acknowledge that he’s there. “It’s not her fault her little sister got pink eye.”

The girls collectively shudder.

“Whatever,” Zoe says finally. “What matters now is finding somewhere else.”

“What’s going on?” Ben asks, pitching his voice low enough to make it clear he’s asking Shira and only Shira.

Zoe turns her death glare on him, anyway. “Our team dinner is this Friday.”

“And it’s cancelled now?” he tries to guess.

“No,” Shira says. “But the actual exciting part—the post-dinner party—is.”

“Brianna was gonna host,” Carley tells him.

“Her little sister—” Shria starts

“Got pink eye,” Ben says. “I actually heard that part.”

“It’s Sam’s last year,” Zoe says. “And Misha’s. Now their sendoff is gonna suck.”

Shira pouts out her lower lip, looking close to tears. Zoe, on the other hand, looks close to murder.

He’s not sure which one’s unnerving him more but, in either case, he makes an offer before it even fully forms in his head.

“My parents are in Santa Barbara for the whole weekend. You guys could party at my place.”

“For real?” Shira asks.

He shrugs. “I don’t see why not. It’s just the team, right?”

“More or less,” Zoe answers.

“Oh, my god, you guys,” Shira says, clapping her hands together. “Screw Brianna, this party might actually be fun now. Ben’s house is awesome.”

“Well,” he says. “It does have a home theater.”

None of them are listening to him anymore, though; they’re chattering over each other instead. Ben quickly loses the thread of the conversation.

He glances at his phone for the time. It’s not like he has anywhere to be and there’s a relatively light serving of homework for the evening, but, well. He almost prefers the eerie silence of his big, empty house to the white noise of eyebrow-shaping technique discussions and torn-ACL horror stories.

“Hey,” he says after ten minutes pass and a headache starts pressing in against his forehead.

Shira glances up from her phone. “You can go.”

“Oh, uh. Sure.”

She raises her—admittedly shapely—eyebrows at him. “Was that not what you were going to ask?”

“No,” he says, a surprised grin forming. “It was.”

“Cool,” she says, already looking back down. “Text you later?”

“Okay,” he says, knowing there’s about a fifty-fifty chance she’ll follow through. “Sounds good.”

###

Ben’s just finished showering and getting ready on Friday night when the doorbell rings.

He curses when he glances at the time—it’s not like Shira to be early to something—and races downstairs.

It’s not Shira he finds when he opens the front door, though.

“Where should we put this?” Trent Harrison asks, nodding behind him at Eddie and Marcus, who are holding a keg.

“Uh,” is Ben’s response.

“Dude, I told you we got the address wrong,” Eddie says.

“No, way,” Trent says. “I recognize this dude from school.”

“You’re here for the team dinner?” Ben asks and, honestly, he’s pretty lucky his voice doesn’t crack.

“Nah, bro,” Trent says. “We’re here for the team _party_.”

Ben blinks.

“Come on, man,” Marcus says, “this thing weighs a ton.”

“Oh, um,” he steps out of the way, still trying to process what, exactly, is happening. “Come in, I guess.”

The group—fuck, the entire Hot Pocket is at his house, he is not prepared for this—takes a look around the front room before heading out back to the pool. He pauses to lock the front door behind them and to shoot Shira a panicked _where are you?_ text before following.

“How did you guys hear about this?” Ben asks from the sliding door, watching Paxton Hall-Yoshida plunk a case of beer down on a table. He can hear how pitiful and loser-ish he sounds, but the knotted ball of anxiety in his stomach is demanding too much of his attention for suavity.

He’s pretty sure his parents won’t care that he’s had a bunch of people over—it’s likely they wouldn’t notice, even if they were home—but it still _feels_ like he’s disobeying them.

“Marcus is dating Lily,” Trent says.

“We’ve hooked up a few times,” Marcus says in a _trying-not-to-brag-but…_ kind of tone.

“Oh,” Ben says. “Cool.”

Trent, Marcus, and Eddie shove back past him, talking amongst themselves about how much alcohol is left in the car.

“Sick pool,” Paxton comments in their absence.

“We keep it at eighty degrees year-round,” Ben hears himself say. _What is wrong with him?_

Paxton simply nods, accepting this information with the same chill disinterest with which he seems to approach everything.

Ben’s phone buzzes with a text, then, saving him from having to wrack his brain for something else to say.

_Pulling into the driveway now_ , Shira’s message reads.

“The girls are here,” Ben says, taking a step back into the house. “So I’m just gonna…”

Paxton doesn’t even acknowledge him. He’s too busy ripping open the beer case.

The front door is hanging open, so Ben can clearly see Trent approaching, a bottle of vodka tucked under his arm. Zoe’s trailing after him, rolling her eyes at something he’s saying.

“Zoe!” Ben calls out. “Where’s—?”

“She’s coming,” Zoe snaps, cutting him off. “Keep your panties on.”

He gives her a hard grin. “Welcome to my home.”

She gives him one back. “Don’t talk to me for the rest of the night.”

“Gladly,” he says to himself, once she’s walked past him.

Another cluster of girls from the team makes it inside before Ben even sees Shira.

He grabs onto her elbow the second she’s within reach and tugs her off to the side. “Why didn’t you tell me there’d be so many people?”

“Um, it’s not,” she says, blinking at him. “Only, like, thirty.”

“The whole Hot Pocket is here,” he says, as if this proves his point. He just—he’s still stuck on it.

“Yeah, a lot of them are dating people from the team,” Shira says, pulling her lip gloss out of her bag and starting to dab some on her lips.

“Okay, well…” he flounders. “It would have been nice to have notice.”

“If I say sorry, will you stop being all weird and whiny?”

“I’m not wh—” He starts to protest, but then one of the girls—Sam, he thinks—pops up at Shira’s elbow.

“Hey,” she says, “you left this in the car.” She hands Shira a certificate.

“Thanks,” Shira says, accepting it and turning to Ben. “Babe, can you go put this in your room. I don’t want to lose it.”

“Uh, yeah,” he says. “I guess.”

“I heard Paxton’s here,” he hears Shira say as he heads for the stairs.

“Oh, my god,” Sam says. “I told him not to bother.”

The rest of the conversation gets drowned out by someone turning on music. It reverberates through the house.

_Well_ , Ben thinks as he climbs, _at least this is better than the place being empty._

###

Ben’s sitting on one of the deck chairs, red plastic cup of beer in hand, and watching Zoe and Carley laugh at something Trent is pantomiming, when Shira suddenly drops into his lap.

“Hey,” she says.

Immediately, his irritation over their earlier snit evaporates; he’s _that_ grateful to have something worthwhile to focus on for the first time all night.

After stooping over to set the drink on the ground, he grabs hold of her, one hand at her lower back and one on her thighs. “Hey.”

“I was thinking,” she says, batting her eyelashes at him.

“Oh, yeah? What about?”

“Ways to show you how grateful I am for tonight.”

He blinks, and then a grin starts to unfurl. “Come to any interesting conclusions?”

“Uh-huh,” she says, and then she kisses him.

Sometimes, usually when he’s not kissing her, Ben thinks about how weird it is that this is the only part of being together they both seem to like. When he is kissing her, though, he can never get past _hey, this is nice_.

Shira groans as he grips the back of her neck, pulling her closer, and Ben smiles against her lips. Being on the same page with her like this always sends a little thrill through him.

He gets so lost in the feeling of Shira pressed against him, in fact, that he totally forgets there’s a party happening around them.

“Yo, did someone order a buzzkill?” Trent asks.

“I live here, actually.”

“Shit, for real? My bad.”

The sound of Howard’s voice is like unthinkingly stepping into the shower before the water warms. Ben yelps in response.

“Uh, Dad!” He shoves Shira off of him, cringing as she struggles to get her feet under her, and practically leaps from the chair. “What are you doing here?”

“Had to get some work stuff before I take off to meet your mom,” he says, holding up a handful of file folders.

“Your house slaps, Mr. Gross,” Trent says.

“Thanks, kid.” His dad gives Trent a kind smile before turning to widen his eyes at Ben. “Be mindful of noise ordinances. You don’t want this little shindig to be broken up by cops.”

“Yeah,” Ben says. “Sure. We’ll, uh, turn the music down.”

With a nod, Howard goes back into the house.

Shira starts to wrap her arms around Ben from behind, but he steps out of reach before she can fully grab onto him.

“One sec,” he says over his shoulder before jogging inside to catch his dad.

He’s standing in the kitchen and typing something into his phone.

“I offered to host Shira’s team for an end-of-the-season celebration thing,” Ben says without preamble, tripping over his words. “I didn’t know this many people would be coming.”

It takes his dad a second to shift his attention, but when does, he simply smiles. “Don’t worry about it, bud.”

“You’re not mad?”

“Of course not.”

“Oh. Cool.” A tentative grin tugs up Ben’s lips.

A peal of laughter sounds outside, then, and Ben really should get back to his party, make sure Shira’s okay…and not pouting. But the simple fact that his dad seems to be lingering makes him want to linger, too.

After a beat, Howard says, “So, this Shira. She your girlfriend?”

“Uh.” Ben blinks, feeling the quicksand of disappointment set into motion. The several times he’s introduced the two of them flash before his eyes. “Yeah.”

“And that’s the girl you were getting cozy with on the patio furniture?”

The skin on Ben’s face scorches so hot, he winces. “Oh, um, yeah.”

Howard nods.

It still feels like there’s more he wants to say.

Sure enough, a moment later, Howard checks his phone and says, “I shouldn’t keep the driver waiting, but…” He pauses, looking Ben in the eye. “Make sure you’re being safe, okay, buddy?”

“Oh, you mean like—?”

Again, Howard nods. “Condoms, yeah.”

Ben shoves his hands into the pockets of his jacket, letting his gaze fall to the floor. “We’re not doing, um, _that_.”

“Still.”

Ben’s not sure what his dad means by that. What’s the use in protection if there’s no contact with, erm, areas that need protecting?

Howard turns to leave as Ben mulls it over. He’s got one foot out the door by the time Ben glances up again.

“Sure thing, Dad,” he says to the empty room.

###

And Ben assumes that’s the end of The Talk. It’s more than he ever expected to get from his parents, after all.

Howard drops down next to him on the sofa Sunday night, though.

“How was the rest of your weekend, kiddo?”

Ben’s so surprised by the gesture, he crashes the car into a pixelated tree. He pauses the game before turning to his dad. “Pretty quiet.”

Howard nods, pats him once on the knee. “When you get a second, come see me in my office, yeah?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer, getting up and walking out of the room before Ben has recovered enough to offer one.

It takes about three minutes for the anxious bubbling in his stomach that needs to know what the hell that’s about to overrule his hesitation.

Howard waves him in as soon as he steps into the doorway.

“What’s going on?” Ben asks.

“I want to follow up on our conversation from the other night.”

It’s not hard to figure out which conversation he’s referencing. They don’t exactly converse a lot.

Ben falls into the chair his dad points at, blinking furiously.

Howard gets up from his seat, perching on the edge of the large desk instead. “I remember what it was like at your age.”

“You do?”

“Sure,” Howard says. “It’s hard to forget.”

Ben tries to picture his dad as a teenager, but all his brain can come up with is a shrunken version of how his dad looks now. Like Tiny Rick.

He must frown because his dad chuckles. “Everything feels heightened when you’re young. Leaves quite the impression.”

“Huh,” is all Ben can muster up in response.

“Look, kid,” Howard says. “My Pops never bothered to check in with me at that age, and that was years before the internet was the marvel it was today.”

Ben huffs a laugh.“So, you’re saying you had to get all your sex education from the library, walking barefoot up a hill both ways?”

“Worse,” Howard says. “I had to infer from all the bragging. You know teenage boys.”

Immediately, Ben’s transported back to seventh grade, when Brian had been going out with Andrea Ortiz. It had been all he ever talked about. And, sure, that had been annoying when Ben was trying to study or wanted to talk about what made science-fiction the best genre—he’d been going through a pretty intense Octavia E. Butler phase—but it was also how he’d learned what to expect from his first kiss.

“That’s…bad?” he asks.

Howard smiles patiently. “It can make things feel like a competition, but that’s not what sex is about.”

“Guess it’s good that public schools got better at disseminating all the pertinent information, then,” Ben says with a forced laugh. He goes to stand.

“Ah, ah, ah,” Howard says, pushing on his shoulder so he falls back into the chair. “I promise, what I’ve got to say doesn’t have anything to do with STDs or what happens to the body during puberty, alright?”

“They call them STIs now, actually,” Ben says, staring down at his feet.

“Can it and listen, kid.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I know there’s pressure at your age—to be the best, to be having the most.”

“Dad…” Ben shifts in his seat.

“Just let me make my point, huh?”

He glances up to find Howard staring directly at him. Ben gulps and returns his attention to his sneakers. “Sorry.”

“Thank you,” Howard says, and then pauses meaningfully. “I just want you to remember that being with someone like that…it’s vulnerable. For everyone. And you don’t have to shy away from that.”

“Sure,” Ben says. “Okay.”

“What you do have to do is talk about it with your partner before you do it.”

Ben pictures sitting Shira down and asking her if she feels she can be vulnerable enough with him to have sex and immediately wishes for death.

“Hey,” Howard says, his voice almost sharp. “Look at me.”

Ben blinks the vision away.

“I’m serious about this,” Howard says when their eyes lock. “If you can’t have the conversation, then you’re not ready for the intimacy involved in sex.”

“Okay,” Ben says, finding it easy to agree to that. “I got it.”

Howard is silent for a beat, clearly trying to decide if he believes that or not. Finally, he says, “Good.”

“Can I go now?”

“Knowing what your partner wants,” Howard says, ignoring him, “is how you make it good for them. And when both parties have fun, that’s how you should measure your abilities as a man. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“That…” Ben coughs. “Girls just want to have fun?”

His dad laughs, and Ben sits up a little straighter.

“Everyone wants to have fun, kid,” Howard says, reaching out and to pat him twice on the cheek before continuing. “It’s easy to get selfish. But sex is about two people, not just one, okay?”

“Okay,” Ben says. “I’ll, uh, keep that in mind.”

Howard nods. “I hope that you do.”

Neither of them speak for a beat.

Ben raises his eyebrows. “Can I go _now_?”

Howard shakes his head, grinning. “One last thing.”

With wary eyes, Ben watches his dad pull open one of the desk drawers. He produces a plastic bag, hands it over.

Ben peers into the bag…and then promptly drops the box of condoms. They land in his lap with a rustle of plastic.

“Okay, well,” he says, feeling his cheeks get hot. “Thanks, I guess.”

“Alright, kid,” Howard says, his grin widening. “Now you can go.”

Ben scrambles to his feet, catching the condoms just before they fall onto the floor. 

When he looks back from the doorway, Howard has already refocused on his work.

###

Even though it feels a little like he’s a task that’s been checked off his dad’s to-do list, Ben can’t dismiss the advice.

He thinks about it at lunch on Monday as he watches Shira and Zoe snap picture after picture together. He thinks about it through the biology lecture. He thinks about it when he meets Shira at her locker between classes, while watching her apply lip gloss with exaggerated care.

He’s so preoccupied with it, that he still finds himself struggling to focus late into the night.

Finally, when he retypes the same lackluster sentence into his English essay for the third time in a row, he gives up, grabbing his phone and falling onto his stomach on his bed.

_Hey_ , he texts Shira.

He’s mindlessly scrolling through Instagram when she texts him back a few minutes later. It’s just the kissing face emoji, but still.

Feeling encouraged, Ben types out, _Do you ever think about us having sex?_ and sends it before he can think too hard about it.

Of course, when he sees the typing bubbles pop up and disappear a few times in quick succession, regret pricks at his fingertips, making his hands shake.

Before he can fully spiral out, he gets a response.

_totally_

Ben stares at that one word for a long time, feeling like he’s jumped off a high-dive only to have time frozen the second there’s no longer something solid beneath his feet.

With a distracting buzz resonating in his ears, he attempts to type out a response to that. _Cool_ doesn’t feel productive enough, _when do you wanna_ is too desperate.

Eventually, he’s forced to concede defeat and, with a gulp, dials Shira’s number.

She picks up just when Ben’s about to panic-cut the call.

“Hey,” she says, her voice all warm and hoarse in his ear.

His stomach reacts violently. “Hi.”

“So…”

He licks his lips. “Yeah.”

“You wanna have sex.”

“Well, duh,” he says because… _duh_.

She giggles at that. “Like, right now?”

He blinks. “Um. No. Not right now.”

“Okay,” she says easily.

“But maybe we could, uh,” he pauses, feeling his cheeks burn. He has to close his eyes to say the next part, even though she’s not even there. “Start ramping up to that. With…other things.”

“I’d like that.”

He opens his eyes, sitting up. “You would?”

“ _Duh_.”

It’s his turn to laugh. “Cool.”

She hums, and Ben presses the phone closer to his ear.

“It would, uh.” He draws in a deep, shaky breath. “Doing things with you would be a first for me.”

“Okay.”

“Would—?” He can’t finish that sentence all of a sudden. Probably because he’s not sure he wants the answer.

“I’ve given one blowjob,” Shira says, impressively frank.

“Oh.”

“It was weird,” she says, “and kind of on a dare.”

“Oh,” he says again. And then he nearly grits out a question about who it’d been with but thinks better of it at the last second. Instead, he hears himself asking, “Was that fun for you?”

She thinks about it for a long moment—so long that he nearly tells her to forget about it—before replying in a surprised voice. “Not really, no. It was, like, really uncomfortable, actually.”

Ben frowns. “Okay, well. We don’t have to do that.”

She giggles again, and he realizes that she’s a little nervous. He’s never heard her nervous before. It makes him wish she were there so he could kiss her.

“It would be different with you, dummy,” she says. “Funner, probably.”

The urge to kiss her intensifies—surprising, since _funner_ is one of his biggest pet peeves.

“That is, uh, good news.”

She murmurs her agreement before they both fall silent. They sit there for a while, the only sound in Ben’s ear the thundering of his own heartbeat. But it’s weird—the way this silence is all at once charged and the most comfortable they’ve ever shared.

That same-page _zing_ is tickling at his palms, biting at his cheeks.

“I, uh, should really go back to homework,” he says once the moment subsides.

“You’re kind of a dork, you know that?” she asks, but her voice is doing that husky-warm thing again so that it feels like a compliment.

“Pretty much painfully aware of it, yeah.”

She snorts.

He grins.

“Thanks for the call,” she says meaningfully.

“Yeah,” he says, nodding. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” she agrees.

Ben does not finish his essay but, well, he also can’t really bring himself to care. Not when it feels like he just passed a way more important test, one with far more practical applications.

He’s never doubting his dad again.


End file.
